The Scholastic Pursuit of Amy

With 3 months post-mission to get my feet back on the ground, I was ready again to descend on Provo and resume my studies at BYU.  I was full of anticipation, my mind racing with all sorts of possibilities.  While more mature and experienced than ever, I was still a blank slate.  On high alert for finding and building female relationships, I kept an open mind, but deep inside, priority one was to find one Amy Price.  I moved into the Glenwood, as decided over two years prior.  I knew from Amy’s own words that she should be in “The Riv” (Riviera), which, conveniently, was the inevitable passage to campus.  Every walk to and from class had my head on a swivel: all points bulletined for a full head of golden blonde hair attached to Amy’s athletic form. 

I went with top friend Shawn Nissen to the Opening Fireside in the Marriott Center, ended up seated next to a reasonably attractive and engaging girl.  In true return-missionary fashion, Shawn and I shifted to Chinese, conferred, and agreed on these suitable characteristics.  I got her name for future reference, but didn’t let this distract me from the real purpose here: to find Amy.  Scanning the entire crowd of some 18,000 students confirmed she was not in attendance.  This matter was not forgotten, but placed on the backburner as the exigencies of the academic year heated up.

Perhaps two weeks into the semester, I ran into childhood friend Beverly Malstrom while crossing the Riv.  Dropping a casual inquiry on Amy’s whereabouts, Bev broke the news that Amy had stayed at Ricks College to become a nurse!  What?!  Was this a fell swoop just to avoid me?  Maybe so, but she couldn’t get off that easily; I had to know.  Minutes later, I had Amy on the phone, not confrontationally, but just an incidental call:  “Hey, how ya doin’?  You know I just happen to be coming to Rexburg this weekend” if you say yes, “you want to go do something…?”  And just to hedge my bets, or give the appearance (to whom?) of being in demand, I asked someone else out for the night before.  Naturally, date #1 was a dud, so all eggs were consolidated to Saturday with Amy.  Amy had a way of dazzling me effortlessly, an effect compounded by her being oblivious to this fact.  So I tried to arrange a trip north to include a date with Amy about once a month, enough to keep her awareness but not drive her away.

These efforts transpired against all hope.  The end-vision to this relationship was so distant that I had to keep a purely platonic, just friends ambience.  I sensed disastrous finality in outpacing any signals coming from Amy, and all indications from her were accepting, but short of romantic.  The tightrope I walked was to make it appear entirely logical to get together and not let my innocent but lofty intentions appear out of line with Amy’s.  This was not an easy role to assume.  Every date would leave me despairing for the lack of progress made, the feeling that she wouldn’t notice if she never heard from me again, and the sensible side of me saying it was time to let her go and move on. 

Three events pulled me back into pursuit.  First, leaving campus after a Fall Saturday morning study session, there was Amy, like an angel walking through the Wilkinson Center parking lot.  I hurriedly re-parked and tracked her to the bowling alley, where I just happened to bump into her and get at least a few minutes’ face time.  Later, again resolved to change course, I was skiing with my cousin Lorin at Targhee, and whom do I encounter directly in front of me in lift line?  Amy practically never skis!  I called her that night to ask her just to dinner, and what a great time!  When I returned home that evening, Ann asked me enthusiastically about it, and as we talked, who should call, but…Amy!  Her message: don’t feel like you have to call me every time you come to Rexburg.  Ann said, “Oh, I’m sorry Wade.”  I returned to BYU to immerse myself in pre-med.  I met a classy girl in trigonometry, who actually liked me (the first one ever at BYU!), sort of a Mormon Molly Ringwald type.  Third, late January, Al Case came with me to Idaho for a weekend, and naturally I couldn’t resist a Sunday night stop in Sugar City, with Al and Paul as buffers.  Amy and family were very welcoming, gave us fresh brownies, and as we left, Al exclaimed to me that Amy would be glad to have my children.  Thanks for that perspective, Al, now back to Provo. 

The semester wore on, culminating in Eric Mulkay’s return from his mission.  As part of his welcome packet, I approached Amy with the idea of a double-date, and could she set Eric up with someone?  Somehow, this outing was the tipping point.  In our picnic at Mesa Falls, for some reason, I felt that I could confidently share with Amy the solitary can of precious apple soda that Eric had brought me from Taiwan.  Then, at my parents’ house, as we watched Star Trek V with a large group of friends, Amy used her nurse skills to give me a hand massage.  Holy cow.  Though I wouldn’t advise others to hang on as tenaciously to an unlikely prospect, I had finally hit paydirt…on two fronts.  I had my first ever opportunity to break off one relationship in favor of another.  It would have been an easier decision if one of them were somehow dysfunctional.

Thus, May through August 1990 became the summer of love.  Amy did a nursing internship at LDS Hospital, staying with her Grandparents Nelson in Bountiful.  Every week was a blur of getting through classes and mouse research, then racing northward for some kind of date in what was then a very accessible Salt Lake City.  Amy accepted my marriage proposal the day before her departure for a semester abroad with the Ricks College Nursing program at the BYU Jerusalem Center.  We held on for each other through that school year, getting married the following June just after Amy’s graduation.  

And that, my friend, is what a university education is all about.

The phases of our learning...

School Memories

I only have the fuzziest of memories before I was 12. Wade will likely have fun tales to tell of our overlapping elementary school days in Mrs. Ashliman's and Mrs. Hammond's classes at L-I-N-C-O-L-N, Lincoln is our school (that was the refrain from our school song, that I vaguely recall). My school memories involving Wade include a few glimpses of him in high school, a few more in college, and our partnership days being married at BYU and ICO.

High School
Madison High was the big red school from Rexburg that constantly beat Sugar-Salem in almost everything. I saw Wade once when I was at their school for a track meet. I think I was wearing shiny royal blue tights. That was surely memorable. Then I remember Wade being an associate justice of the Idaho Supreme Court at Youth Legislature our senior year. I thought he would just joke about everything, but it seems like he did a good job. He was in the famed Madison Boys Drill Team (what was that called?) so I would have seen him in that, but did not realize I was watching my future spouse.

College
Summer ward. Ricks College. Kirkham Auditorium. Random (were they random?) encounters on campus. We talked about Wade's math class, me giving tours, devotionals, mutual friends, and Wade's beginning running program for Fitness for Life class that he was working on with Ann. One thing we did not discuss was me not returning to BYU in the fall. It was a last minute decision in August, and it was a little embarrassing for me that I was going back to a junior college, and I really did not think that I would see or date Wade after school started, so I just didn't mention it (how rude!).

But time and again he came home to Rexburg to visit and asked me out on enjoyable dates. One time I had been on a completely lousy date the night before my date with Wade, and was in a quiet, moody mood. I was teaching Relief Society the following day in church and was frustrated from the previous night's interactions. Wade was mellow and fun, lighthearted and kind. By the end of the evening I was calm and in much happier spirits. That was the first of many fun dates that year. Wade won my heart during those college years by being consistent and thoughtful. One night he just dropped by with Al, a friend from BYU and his little brother Paul. We ate yummy triple chocolate cake and I started thinking of Wade more often. Paul was a likable character and Wade brought him along on many of our dates. Seeing him intermittently while he was at BYU was good and got better and better.

By this time I was in the nursing program at Ricks and Wade was in Pre-optometry/Psychology at BYU. Once when visiting BYU with my dad and sister, Carol, we were bowling and I ran into Wade. He has more details on this chance meeting. If he doesn't share that, then I'll add it later.

Over time we grew closer as friends. Finally, I was spending the summer between years of nursing school at LDS hospital in Salt Lake City, as a nurses aide. Wade was doing summer school at BYU. This was the summer I fell in love with Wade. He courted me with roses from the yard at the house he lived and we hiked, attended plays and movies, explored Provo, Salt Lake and surrounding Utah towns. It's a good thing I acknowledged my feelings and had prayed about loving Wade, since at the end of the summer (1990) he asked me to marry him. The subsequent semester with me in Greece, Turkey, and Israel was long. And I missed Wade. We wrote to each other, got to talk on the phone a couple of times, and got good at being apart (turns out that was good practice!).

After returning home from Israel, I stayed with my sister, Carol at her apartment at BYU for a few days before returning home. I was able to attend some classes with Wade, the most memorable of which was his Anatomy class with Dr. Van DeGraaff, the man who wrote the anatomy textbook. Wade was an engaged and hard working student at BYU. It was fun to see him in his element there.

The first year of marriage at BYU was THE BEST! Wade and I loved our newlywed years of marriage, and Provo was an ideal place for a young couple such as us to study, work and live the BYU-Cougar dream.

Graduate School
We moved to Chicago for Optometry School. Being the part-time working nurse spouse to a full-time doctor student was crazy hard sometimes, since we had little Jimmy and I was a full-time mom, too. I helped Wade study for harder classes like bio-chemistry. Amazing that I could quiz him on stuff I don't even know. Anyway, we had 2 more babies and with lots of blessings and hard work from Wade, he graduated with flying colors in 1996.

Your Mom Goes to College
The next school experience we had was when Wade went to Turkey in 2006, ten years later. I went back to school to get a bachelor's degree in nursing in Rexburg and BYU-Idaho (the former Ricks College). Thanks to internet technology I was able send papers to Wade for editing and suggestions. It was a HUGE help. Half of my classes were online, too, so I lived on the computer that year between Skyping Wade and doing classes. Going to school kept me busy and made the time go by quickly. Now we both do continuing education for our medical fields and Wade periodically does professional military education and similar training for the Air Force.

A family that learns together, knows more stuff!